NLL Player Rankings: The players most positively impacting both sides of center

Zach Currier, San Diego Seals (Photo: Kalea Vizmanos)

After the first several weeks of the 2023-24 National Lacrosse League season are complete, The Lax Mag will publish a weekly NLL Player Ranking, examining the league’s Top 30 players from Week 1 right up until the end of the regular season.

TLM’s Top 30 NLL Player Rankings have nothing to do with reputations, career resumes, success in past seasons, whether we know a player personally, recognizing deserving players who’ve previously been passed over, player popularity, the size of their social media following, whether you slide into their DMs, or who others around the league tell us should get hype.

Our rankings, which only take into consideration a player’s performance for the current regular season, will be calculated using both our star-rating system after each game, but also a player’s season-long statistical position (based on per-game averages) across the league (more on both breakdowns below). Only players who have played two-thirds of their team’s games or more will qualify.

Click here for an even more in-depth breakdown of our scoring system.

Lyle Thompson, Georgia Swarm (Photo: Christian Bender)

After Week 10 this season, in hopes of kind of determining who the most complete player in the league was, we pulled the Top 100 individual per-games averages for the following stats: goals, assists, loose balls, caused turnovers and blocks.

At that time, no one player placed in all five of those hundreds, but eleven managed to fit into four of them: Adam Wiedemann (Georgia), Challen Rogers (Toronto), Dawson Theede (Halifax), Dhane Smith (Buffalo), Graeme Hossack (Halifax), Ian MacKay (Buffalo), Jake Boudreau (Saskatchewan), Lyle Thompson (Georgia), Nick Weiss (Buffalo), Owen Grant (Vancouver) and Reid Bowering (Vancouver).

Now nine weeks later, we extracted the Top 100 averages in all five of those same statistical categories again.

The results?

Owen Grant, Vancouver Warriors (Photo: Heather Barry)

Out are Weidemann, Rogers, Theede, MacKay and Bowering, who today are one of 56 players who have averages strong enough to rank in a combination of three of those five stats.

So, that leaves Smith, Hossack, Boudreau, Thompson, Weiss and Grant with stat lines so superior they still rank in four of those five over two months later.

Well, they have company.

Also in the 4/5 mix are Will Malcom (Colorado), Jake Withers (Halifax) and the only rookie to rank this high in four key categories, Adam Poitras (Las Vegas). The only rookies to rank in three of five are Brayden Mayea (Calgary) and Mike Robinson (Halifax). Poitras and Robinson ranked really high in our recent Rookie of the Year rundown, while Mayea’s lack of games played (has only played in 8 of 15 games for the Roughnecks) will likely cost him ROTY votes (as it should), but his opening NLL season has still been impressive.

Ryan Terefenko, Halifax Thunderbirds (Photo: Trevor MacMillan)

Get this… two players have averages high enough in each category to rank in all five areas, and obviously did not even appear in our analysis back in late-January.

Who are they?

Zach Currier (San Diego) and Ryan Terefenko (Halifax).

Check out these stunning full stat lines:

Stat: Total (Average)

Zach Currier

Goals: 14 (1.00)
Assists: 24 (1.71)
Points: 38 (2.71)
Loose Balls: 159 (11.36)
Caused Turnovers: 25 (1.79)
Blocks: 11 (0.79)

Ryan Terefenko

Goals: 17 (1.13)
Assists: 18 (1.20)
Points: 35 (2.33)
Loose Balls: 108 (7.20)
Caused Turnovers: 11 (0.73)
Blocks: 7 (0.47)

These are TPOTY-type lines, even though the two talents play somewhat differing roles.

Their up-front numbers are fairly similar, which may be more impressive for Terefenko, who is not seeing nearly as much time on the offensive side of centre and is shooting almost 50% less that Currier. With that said, although Currier is getting way more offensive minutes in San Diego than he ever did with the Calgary Roughnecks (he averaged 23 shots per season in Calgary and is already at 70 with San Diego this year), where he had spent his entire career prior to this year, Currier is still crushing both his loose ball and caused turnover numbers, not only in comparison to Terefenko, but across the entire league too.

Dhane Smith, Buffalo Bandits (Photo: Caroline Sherman)

While Terefenko plays a more traditional transitional role, the NLL’s Transition Player of the Year Award has become more of a two-way, complete, pound-for-pound player honour (see the various types of players who’ve win this award), which would most certainly still include Currier, but by that standard, could include a player like Smith too.

Smith and Thompson are the only two full-time forwards who appeared above leading into Week 19, both playing significant defensive minutes while back tracking after possession is lost (sometimes playing a third straight shift by pressing forward again). Smith especially, who has been leading the league in points per game since the start of the season, to also have defensive stat averages that rank in the top third of the league (or better) is almost unheard of.

Not at all surprisingly, Smith remains our #1 ranked players in this week’s updated NLL TOP 30, and his full stat line easily backs that placement up.

NLL TOP 30: Week 10

TW. (LW) Player, Team (Pos.)

1. (1) Dhane Smith, Buffalo (F)
2. (2) Connor Fields, Rochester (F)
3. (3) Josh Byrne, Buffalo (F)
4. (5) Zach Currier, San Diego (T)
5. (8) Zach Higgins, Ottawa (G)
6. (6) Ryan Lanchbury, Rochester (F)
7. (4) Mitch Jones, Philadelphia (F)
8. (12) Jeff Teat, Ottawa (F)
9. (7) Joe Resetarits, Philadelphia (F)
10. (9) Curtis Dickson, Calgary (F)
11. (10) Matt Vinc, Buffalo (G)
12. (15) Matt Hossack, Saskatchewan (D)
13. (11) Lyle Thompson, Georgia (F)
14. (14) Jesse King, Calgary (F)
15. (17) Alex Simmons, Albany (F)
16. (16) Randy Staats, Halifax (F)
17. (13) Robert Hope, Colorado (D)
18. (18) Owen Grant, Vancouver (T)
19. (24) Keegan Bal, Vancouver (F)
20. (22) Jake Withers, Halifax (T)
21. (23) Wes Berg, San Diego (F)
22. (26) Ryan Terefenko, Halifax (T)
23. (19) Jake Boudreau, Saskatchewan (T)
24. (20) Dillon Ward, Colorado (G)
25. (21) Mitch de Snoo, Philadelphia (D)
26. (25) Zach Manns, Saskatchewan (F)
27. (28) Ryan Lee, Colorado (F)
28. (28) Clarke Petterson, Halifax (F)
29. (29) Nick Weiss, Buffalo (T)
30. (NR) Ryan Smith, Rochester (F)